Self-harm
In the past I have self-harmed. It first started when my best friend who I was in love with got a girlfriend. We were very close and we drifted abruptly when they started going out. I started to feel depressed and lonely. I thought I would never be able to just have a boyfriend like he had a girlfriend. I would never be able to be in a relationship where there were no problems and everybody in the school knew and thought it was “cute”. I thought I would constantly be stuck in a hell of never being able to openly love someone or be with them. This developed into a feeling of never being loved full-stop.
H and I were very close and so in losing him I felt I had nobody I could really talk to. In reality I had plenty of people but I just couldn’t see it. I began cutting my wrists. I remember the first time and even what sent me over the edge and it was an absolute stupid reason. I can see that clearly now but at the time I was in such a poor emotional state anything would have driven me to it. At first I was upset and ashamed. I swore I would never do it again. The next week I was still feeling incredibly depressed and I had begun to develop throbbing headaches continually. They weren’t sharp or acutely painful, but just a constant ache in my mind. So to get rid of this I cut again. The physical pain distracted me. I no longer thought about anything else and went straight to sleep afterwards.
For the next couple of months I continued to self-harm. Over time I became immune to it. I was depressed and just felt completely numb. Numb to people, to emotion, to pain, anything. I remember accidentally catching my fingernail on the edge of chair while I was moving it and ripping the top half of my finger nail off. I felt barely anything. It’s the strangest thing, you can build up an immunity to pain. This of course meant the cutting got worse as I needed to do more damage to feel the same level of release. I was addicted to it.
During this time I became so incredibly depressed I considered committing suicide many times. It actually scares me how close I was to doing it. The thing that always stopped me was that I didn’t want to hurt my family. Despite my numbness to school, friends and everything else. I couldn’t stand hurting my family like that. I continued to think about it and in times of desperation I would cut deeper only to find it just left worse scars and never actually put me in danger of dying.
The thing that stopped this cycle? My dog. My family got a new puppy over the Easter Holidays and it became my new obsession. I was with it constantly and felt happier. As it was the holidays I was away from the stresses of school and friends so I managed to feel better. It was gradual but there was just one time I went to cut and just thought...why? So I didn’t. It happened a few times but it wasn’t on a daily basis like before. I honestly think my dog saved my life. Before that I didn’t see a way out.
A lot of people think self-harm is about attention seeking. And I think perhaps for some it is, but for me it wasn’t. I never showed my cuts to anyone and kept my arms covered during the time I cut and for around 4/5 months afterwards until the scars healed. It wasn’t something I wanted to showcase, it was something I was ashamed of. I still have very very faint scars now but they aren’t noticeable unless you know to look for them.
I did end up telling H about a month after I had stopped. I hadn’t spoken to anyone during the time I was cutting but afterwards I gradually came back and tried to mend any friendships I had torn. H came over to my house one day and we began talking. Just casually at first, but then he started asking what had been wrong with me the past few months. He had been extremely worried about me but didn’t know what to do. I said it was nothing and not to worry about it but he pushed and reminded me about all the things we had spoken about in the past and that I could trust him with anything. So I told him. He got upset and wanted me to know he was always there for me and I tried to reassure him it was fine I had moved past it. It was good. I felt it helped me move on from it finally by telling someone.
I didn’t cut again for 18 months. It was at a party. I had been incredibly stressed, didn’t know what I was doing with my life, felt so much pressure, had a little bit too much Jack Daniels and when someone said something I didn’t like, I snapped. They took my half full bottle of whiskey and poured it out and went on some speech about how they were doing what’s right. They didn’t really know me and they were very drunk themselves so I snapped. I shouted at them and got told to calm down so I ran off to the bathroom. I sat on the bathroom floor for what seemed like a few minutes but was told later I was gone for over an hour. While I was in the bathroom I had “calmed down” by cutting. I needed to feel numb again. There was just too much pressure on me. When I came out again, there were people looking for me including H. He recognised something was wrong immediately and it didn’t take him long to figure it out. I was a mess, and he sat with me till about 2am when he had to go home. He kept everyone away from me and just tried to find out why I’d done it but I wasn’t really in a fit state to talk properly. H still tried and this is a shortened version of what how the conversation went (or what I remember of it):
H: “Ethan, what is this all about?”
Me: “What?”
H: “This. Everything, there’s something you aren’t telling me I know it but you have to”
Me(very very drunk): “There’s nothing, forget about it”
(Lot’s of him asking and me brushing it off)
H: “Ethan, I know...”
Silence
Me: “Know what...”
H: “That there’s something you’ve been holding in for years, just tell me. You can tell me anything”
Me: (still incredibly drunk and shaking): “H, don’t make me”
H: “It’s okay, you can tell me!”
Me: “Please don’t make me...”
H: “ Okay, okay, I won’t”
(If I seem coherent in this conversation it’s because it’s summarised. My head was between my knees and most times he said anything I didn’t reply. We talked for a lot longer than this, this is just what I remember of what I did say.)
This has replayed in my head quite a few times. I was so very close to just blurting it out but I didn’t. A tiny sober part of me remembered that there was a tomorrow where I would have to face the consequences. Still, when I think about H’s choice of words and the fact he wasn’t surprised when I asked him not to make me tell him, I can’t help but think...does he know anyway? It certainly seems so? But then am I just thinking he knows because I know what it is, when in actual fact he might just know there is something. Who knows. We never spoke about it again. He talked to me the next day to check I was okay but never about our conversation.
Since then I have relapsed a few times, but nothing notable. It’s always times of great stress. And whenever I have done it since I haven’t been very drunk or depressed. Just stressed and it’s a coping mechanism. I still know it’s not healthy and I avoid it. I haven’t done it for about 10 months now but I know I’m more prone to it. This recent change in my attitude had made me feel I am less likely to resort to such drastic measures in the future. I’m more relaxed about life in general. I see the light at the end of the tunnel.
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